Art Deco Buildings

 Single 40c 'Civic Theatre, Auckland' gummed stamp.

The Civic Theatre is the only movie palace in New Zealand built on the scale of the huge fantasy cinemas of which every respectable American city could boast at least one. The Civic was conceived and constructed before the Depression began, when the boom of the 1920s was at its height. However, two months before the opening, Black Friday on Wall Street changed the world and although this would not have been apparent at the gala opening on 20 December 1929.

Single $1.00 'Masonic Hotel, Napier' gummed stamp.

Napier’s massive earthquake in 1931 was a disaster for the city and the province of Hawke’s Bay. By good fortune this happened when the Art Deco style was new to New Zealand and approaching the height of its popularity overseas. The new Napier arose when architects were seeking a new style for a new century and buildings were beginning to take on a new look, but ornament was not yet dead.

Single $1.50 'Medical and Dental Chambers; Hastings' gummed stamp.

Hastings did not suffer as badly as Napier in the 1931 earthquake, because it was further from the epicentre, had fewer large masonry buildings and did not lose its water supply as completely as Napier, enabling the fires which broke out to be contained. But many buildings were lost, and most of the facades. As a result, Hastings too looked, by 1933, like a brand new, modern city, built like Napier in the styles fashionable at the time - Stripped Classical, Spanish Mission and Art Deco.

Single $1.80 'Buller County Chambers, Westport' gummed stamp.

People in other countries are often surprised that Art Deco reached isolated New Zealand. It certainly did reach New Zealand - even its more isolated parts. Westport boasts two important Art Deco buildings – the Westport Borough Council building and the former Buller County Council building (illustrated on the stamp).